Shops and shrines on a busy road in old Bangalore
I KNOW OF TWO Avenue Roads. One is in London. Lined with the homes of the wealthy, it runs between Swiss Cottage and Regents Park. The other one is in Bangalore. It runs between KR Market (aka City Market) and a large Hindu temple (mandir) where Kempe Gowda Road becomes District Office Road. Both the road in London and its namesake in Bangalore carry much traffic, but there the similarity ends.
Avenue Road in Bangalore (‘AR’) is mainly lined with all kinds of shops, especially those dealing in paper goods (stationery as well as printed books). It runs through one of the oldest parts of the city: Chickpet. The lines of shops are punctuated by small lanes and alleys that lead away from AR.
Old pillars in a mandir on Avenue Road in Bangalore As you stroll along the thoroughfare, you will pass mandirs and one church. And near the KR Market end of the road, a short lane leads to a Muslim shrine, the Dargah-e-Hazrath Manik Mastan Sha Saherwadi. It is well worth removing your footwear to enter this peaceful place. The grave it contains is in a small room with a mirrored, domed ceiling.
Some of the mandirs on or near AR are also worth looking into. Although some of their facades look fairly recent, the carved stone columns within the buildings look quite old. Near the street entrance of one of the mandirs on AR, I saw two intricate stone carvings of Hindu subjects. Both looked as if they might have been carved several centuries ago.
The Rice Memorial Church stands in its own small grounds, separated more from its neighbours than the mandirs on AR. Named after the British missionary, the Rev Benjamin Holt Rice, this Church of South India place of worship was built between 1913 and 1916 on the site of an earlier chapel first constructed in 1834, and then later rebuilt before being demolished. Although I have passed it often, I have not yet been able to enter it.
Not far from the church and a couple of picturesque mandirs, there is a branch of the Kamat chain of eateries. You can stop there for snacks and a variety of beverages. This place is in the midst of the numerous bookshops on AR. Proclaiming discounted books, these stores mainly stock textbooks and computer programming instruction manuals. Incidentally, AR is a good place to find a wide variety of diaries and calendars.
Bustling Avenue Road in Bangalore is a far more colourful and interesting thoroughfare than its rather elegant but staid namesake more than 5000 miles away in London. The street in Bangalore and the lanes leading off it give one a good idea of the ‘flavour’ of the parts of the city which existed before the arrival of the British imperialists. It makes a fascinating contrast to the newer Cantonment areas that became established after the British began settling in Bangalore.
